Communication systems, in particular wireless communication systems, are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
A wireless multiple-access or multi-carrier communication system can simultaneously support communication for multiple wireless terminals. Each terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations.
In order to increase radio resource efficiency, multiple-carrier systems are implemented by allowing data traffic to flow over multiple carriers at the same time. The result is an increase in system efficiency and performance and a decrease in overall system latency. It is known in the art that combining of resources offers statistical trunking gains.
Therefore, multi-carrier systems that optimize system operation and flow control to allow the maximum statistical trunking gains are desired.